Monthly Archives: October 2015

The Yadkin Well folks stopped drilling Thursday evening. They returned yesterday morning with yet two more trucks, one for water, fuel, and drilling pipe, and the other with a big bad hydraulic pump. The latter truck has a name on it, “Rock Buster.”

The two guys started their morning pulling 65 20′ joints of drilling pipe out of the ground and stacking these on their flat bed truck. We left for town, didn’t really want to risk jinxing the next operation. We’ve spent way too much time nearby while they were unsuccessfully mining for water.

on our driveway

We returned yesterday afternoon as the guys were stowing their gear. They successfully hit water, so we’re happy campers. A few more days and we’ll have full hookups. Amenities = quiet, cool, private, +1 mile trails, beautiful woods.

75′ from our camper

The turkeys like it, so do the deer and woodchucks. Not so much the squirrel. Yep, lone squirrel, the only one we’ve seen.

Like this:

We enjoyed a fabulous gathering of aluminized folks at John Leake’s Alumalina Rally at Palmetto Cove Park in Cleveland SC. Approx 120 Airstreams, members and non-members of the Airstream Club, didn’t matter – everyone seemed to have a great time in wonderful Fall weather.

The drive back to Ashe County was accentuated by Blue Ridge Parkway trip from Blowing Rock to Deep Gap. Whatever the experts say, this afternoon was PEAK COLOR on that stretch of the BRP! Just gorgeous.

Just returned to Woodland Ridge, our spot in Ashe County this afternoon and glad rain hasn’t started yet. We want rain, but nice to have opportunity to park the Airstream, arrange everything, get settled without dealing with rain too. Let it rain tonight!

This was a “contest” weekend for ham radio everywhere. No matter where I dial in, multiple ham radio operators from all over the world trying to connect with each other. On one hand, sort of amazing so many people are involved in ham radio. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) reports more licensed hams in USA than ever before, and something like 18K new ones each year. Sure seemed like it all this weekend, whenever I turned on the radio.

So, it didn’t matter we had relatively weak reception in Palmetto Cove, tucked down below mountains all around. I was able to check into the RV Service Net ham radio net at 8:15 Fri morning, thanks to a relay from friend Garry W8OI in Huntington WV (Garry’s been a licensed ham radio operator for 62 years!) Even in difficult conditions, ham radio always works.

This afternoon I raised my G5RVjr dipole antenna (it’s 55′ up, between a pair of trees 70′ apart) and re-installed my tuner to optimize using that antenna. Now I have choices for HF ham radio of screwdriver antenna on the Airstream’s roof, G5RVjr (oriented north to south, so strongest signal east-west,) and 74′ end-fed wire. Capable and fun!

While at the RV gathering in South Carolina this weekend there was an open house of many of the Airstreams including ours. Lots of questions asked about how we have room in a 8.5′ X 23′ cabin to live year-round. Complicating the question is our sort of full-featured ham radio station and other stuff we like in our lives. Folks naturally are curious about how we fit all our interests into a <200sf cabin and live without getting in each other's way. Many consider our space tiny, and it is smaller than many Tiny Houses. We neither feel cramped nor crowded despite supporting trappings for our varied interests.

A couple living together, with or without children, makes agreements ALL THE TIME. Another word sometimes heard is, compromises. It's what being together is about for us. We're in this together. If one of us isn't suited then something's wrong for us both. We don't look at compromises as a reduction in stock for one of us, but try to make it a win for us both. I've kidded before about the genesis of moving the ham radio station from in the truck's dash to on the dinette table. Debbie expressed reservations but I promised to make it work well for us. It did, although she's not sure if this latest iteration is fully okay.

I added the bottom component today. It's a ham radio antenna tuner with three knobs, a meter, and three buttons. It essentially doubles the ham radio footprint on the table. One, it's on my side of the dinette table, except when we share our table with friends. Then it's "our" side of the table. Two, this component IS removable. Unscrewing two cable connectors and one small power wire on the back lets me slip this tuner out and store it. Debbie's being very sporting about going along with it for now, and I'm okay with moving it out of sight if helpful.

Here's what my "big" ham radio station now looks like in this full timer's cabin:

Full-timing means we’re living in our RV, right? We still are enjoying our travels. We traveled a lot in the first half of 2015. The second half, so far, has involved traveling to four or five rallies and spending time on our land. We love traveling, seeing people, enjoying activities in local and special event rallies (more on these later!) But we’re becoming attracted to “the other side.” You know, the “home place” attractions where you like working and relaxing on your own space.

Owning a little land in the NC mountains has various benefits including a lot of exercise, gorgeous views most days, dark skies, and quiet. One benefit we initially overlooked is the apple crop. You might remember we first viewed our land 23 months ago, Thanksgiving 2013, and closed on it January 2014. We heard there were cooking and eating apples, but no details. Somehow last year we missed the entire apple production.

Returning from WBCCI International Rally this Summer we spent many days hand mowing weeds and cleaning up the heritage apple orchard on the northwest corner of our land. Gradually it started looking like an orchard again. The trees are long-neglected but still productive.

Four big apple trees have given us good eating and cooking apples for over a month. Four trees produce four distinctly different apple varieties. Perhaps next year we’ll take some to a local expert and get them typed – we have no idea what kind they are. And, there are more apple trees up hill from the orchard with apples we haven’t even tried.

Today we may have harvested the last of our apples in an afternoon-long effort to beat tonight’s freeze. The weather guessers claim a low temperature of 29 deg tonight, and 30 tomorrow night. We picked all the apples we could, in case the freeze hits our little orchard. Now to look up some more recipes for apple dishes. Who knows, we could get tired of fresh apple crisp with butter pecan ice cream.